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| BrianBoitano |
 Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 12:25 am |
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Joined: 16 Jun 2006
Posts: 124
Location: Houston, TX
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Hello readers! This is a bit of an experiment of mine, that is part public service announcement, part creative writing exercise, and part editorial. This is the first installment of What Would Brian Boitano Do?, an essay column that I will be doing from time to time as I see fit and as the masses demand it. The premise behind each installment is that I will get up on my high horse and let you all know what I think about various subjects, or maybe I will offer advice on something that I think I have a helpful outlook for. If at any point you as a reader feel that I am just some arrogant jerk imposing my opinions on you, by all means ignore this. I wouldn’t want to lose any friends or make any enemies as a result of my little creative outlet. With that all said, here is my first essay! 
Driving Smart: A Treatise on Methods and Procedures to Save Gas
I’m sure it won’t take much elaboration to explain why an article like this is needed. Every driver who fills his or her own tank knows that as the price of gas (or petrol, if you prefer) increases, it becomes increasingly worthwhile to adopt gas-saving habits into their driving routines. I have given this subject much thought, as I have for a time driven a Toyota Prius, and switching back to my less-efficient Protegé has made me aware of just how much gas I waste.
For those of you unaware, the main reason why the Prius gets a much greater gas mileage than non-hybrid cars is that in most cars, deceleration is effectively converting all of the kinetic energy of your motion into heat and wear of the brake pads. The hybrids capture this kinetic energy with electic generators in-line with the transmission and stores this energy in the form of an electric potential in a battery. This energy is used later to assist acceleration, so that less gasoline is used when compared to typical cars. The second primary way that hybrids save gas is with the onboard computer carefully monitoring engine use, so that it may shut it off and start it up, to reduce idle time. Idle time is when the engine is running at low rpms to keep up with the transmission, such as when decelerating or going downhill. Gas is wasted during idle time, since you don’t need the engine to decelerate or to go downhill, and the computer knows this. As a result, the engine is shut off during idle time and restarted once it is needed again.
"Okay", I hear you saying, "Hybrids are great, but none of this will help me with my non-hybrid". Well, we can at least try to emulate through our practices what the Prius does automatically, and in that way achieve a significant increase in fuel economy. For instance, we can increase our gas mileage if we pay attention to our Kinetic Energy, just as the Prius does. We can’t capture it when we decelerate, but we can make sure that we utilize it to the best efficiency we can. This can be achieved through two means: preventing excess and utilizing coasting power.
By "Preventing excess", I mean consciously asking yourself as you accelerate "What speed should I accelerate to?". If you notice while asking yourself this that the light ahead just turned red, or there is traffic ahead, or some other reason that high speeds will not be possible, then you can avoid the wasteful acceleration.
"Utilizing coasting power" means choosing to coast where you normally might speed and then suddenly stop. For example, when exiting the freeway where you know you will have to decelerate, whether it be down to the off-ramp speed limit or if there is a stop light up ahead, you can begin coasting early. In this way you don’t tax your engine by continued pressing on the gas pedal, and your engine can slow down to a lower, less gas guzzling RPM.
Another way to use our knowledge of kinetic energy is to always choose the lane of least resistance. By this I mean the lane that, although it may be going slightly slower than the fast lane, has less frequent stops (the middle lane is usually best; you don’t have to slow when the car in front of you turns like in the leftmost and rightmost lanes). Remember that if you can reduce the number of times you reduce your speed, your average gas mileage will improve. Again, this is because with every braking you are essentially throwing away kinetic energy.
Hills and overpasses present a unique situation. Most drivers will accelerate up to normal speed while climbing a hill, but this leads to kinetic energy loss when they brake on the way down the hill. It is better to, traffic permitting, coast a bit when you reach the base of a hill. That way, on the way up you are very efficiently converting your kinetic energy into gravitational potential energy, which you can just as efficiently convert back to kinetic energy when you coast down the other side of the hill and gravity does the acceleration for you. Of course this works best will small hills and overpasses, as coasting up the side of a large hill will leave you going very slow. Use the gas pedal to keep a reasonable speed, but still try to keep in mind that you’ll get a speed boost on the way down.
There, now you are eqipped with 4 new techniques to improve your gas mileage:
preventing excess
utilizing coasting power
lane of least resistance
and our Hills and overpasses methods.
Additionally, two famous methods, which I don’t go into detail here as they are well documented elsewhere are:
*Roll down the windows as opposed to using the A/C for speeds below 40 MPH, but use A/C for speeds of 40 MPH and above. This is because the drag created by rolled down windows at speeds greater than 40 MPH wastes more energy than the A/C draws.
*For those with a pickup truck, drive with the tailgate up. This is counterintuitive, as with the tailgate down you would assume air flows more freely. This has been proved incorrect in labs, as with the tailgate up a pillow of air forms, which effectively smooths out the wind profile of your car and allows the rest of the air to zip by without creating a drag-inducing current in the bed of your truck.
Please let me know if any of you try these. I’d like to know if they work well for you, or if you have suggestions for improvement. I hope that somebody benefits from this, I know writing this has benefitted me, as I’ve said this is a great creative outlet for me.
Last of all I’d like to thank you for reading, as I know this is a very long post, and some of you probably know most of this already, but it’s nice of you to humor me 
Enjoy! |
"Not again" -Hans
Hello kind Sir or Madam, I am a polite sig virus. Please put me into your fine and dandy signature so that I might continue to replicate. Thank you for your time. |
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| elf lvr |
| Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 12:33 am |
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Joined: 13 Jun 2006
Posts: 3065
Location: Rivendell
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| I do not drive yet, but when i do the gas situation will probably be a lot worse, and i will do well to remember your suggestions. I also look forward to hearing your opinion on other issues, and perhaps debating my views against yours. Keep up the good work! |
Happy Hunting! Elf Lvr
Winner of Best Personality in the FPCA. Thanks!
Archduke Elf Lvr - Archidoux of the Chosen Ones
AMV Maker In-Training! Check out my newest production, Katsu!- A Diedara Tribute!
And behold, EL declared it good. And there was morning, and there was evening, the first (new) day. ~ DainIronfoot |
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| BrianBoitano |
| Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:01 am |
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Joined: 16 Jun 2006
Posts: 124
Location: Houston, TX
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Glad to see this concept is well-recieved, at least by one person 
I could take requests if you have issues you’d like to discuss, or I could just wait until the muse has me again and do whatever I feel like then. I’m cool with whatever  |
"Not again" -Hans
Hello kind Sir or Madam, I am a polite sig virus. Please put me into your fine and dandy signature so that I might continue to replicate. Thank you for your time. |
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| elf lvr |
| Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:03 am |
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Joined: 13 Jun 2006
Posts: 3065
Location: Rivendell
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the muse is fine. just be ready i have been known to be a debater who is very violent in his beliefs...  but it should be okay, i am only 14 and not very world-wise (although more than i want to be, there’s some really bad stuff out there) |
Happy Hunting! Elf Lvr
Winner of Best Personality in the FPCA. Thanks!
Archduke Elf Lvr - Archidoux of the Chosen Ones
AMV Maker In-Training! Check out my newest production, Katsu!- A Diedara Tribute!
And behold, EL declared it good. And there was morning, and there was evening, the first (new) day. ~ DainIronfoot |
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| Cobra |
| Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 3:01 am |
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Joined: 12 Jul 2005
Posts: 1202
Location: Austin, TX, USA
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BrianBoitano wrote: Roll down the windows as opposed to using the A/C for speeds below 40 MPH, but use A/C for speeds of 40 MPH and above. This is because the drag created by rolled down windows at speeds greater than 40 MPH wastes more energy than the A/C draws.
Hadn’t heard that one before, that’s a useful bit of trivia.
I had the privilege of driving a Prius during a trip from Austin to Santa Fe, about 12 hours each way. I miss getting 50 MPG...  |
| http://cobracards.com -- Web's best deals on Trading Card Games. |
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| sickofpalantirs |
| Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 7:34 am |
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 7750
Location: somwhere, over the rainbow way up high. There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.
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whoa wicked mileage.
interesting brian boitano the only debate we have had on thsi site was about the da vince code everyone(even tOO) agrreed it was crap |
 Sop's haves/ top wants
(mm)"SoP: you will always be the Official CC Spammer in my heart"
"DáinIronfoot"
Spammers really are amazing creatures. You can learn all there is to know about their ways in a month. And yet, after a hundred years, they can still surprise you.  |
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| BrianBoitano |
| Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:31 pm |
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Joined: 16 Jun 2006
Posts: 124
Location: Houston, TX
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Yeah, the really cool things about the Prius is that it has both an "Energy Monitor" so you can see what is powering what at the moment, as well as a gas mileage graph with averages for each five-minute chunk of time (bar-graph style), so you can really see the effects of stop-and-go traffic and hills on the mileage. I’ts not only a very efficient car, it’s a learning experience!
Oh, and just to be as realistic as possible, the Prius (first edition, I don’t know about the newer, larger ones) gets 42 average mpg, that’s all things considered. If you’re doing long trips like Cobra probably did, you can get up to 60 MPG if you’re doing a constant speed on the highway |
"Not again" -Hans
Hello kind Sir or Madam, I am a polite sig virus. Please put me into your fine and dandy signature so that I might continue to replicate. Thank you for your time. |
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| Gagnut |
| Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 2:59 pm |
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Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 846
Location: Ames, Iowa
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| I own a lawn mower, any way to save gas on that? |
| I don't have an avatar, I don't have a sig, my posts speak for themselves. |
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| La_Sin_Grail |
| Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 3:04 pm |
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Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 806
Location: Maryland
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| heh my family just got a prius. When I use the air conditioning and drive on miserably hilly roads, I can still pull 50 mpg. Rawr |
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| fingolfin |
| Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 3:08 pm |
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Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Posts: 321
Location: it's getting hotter in Iowa every day
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Does WWBBD stand for
What
Would
Brian
Boitano
Do
Is that right? |
Soldier: why'd you do that captain?
John Wayne: Because I hate your guts!!
Exerpt from "Iwo Jima." |
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